In and out of jail as a teen, purported Athens gang member in prison as adult

Monday

Feb 24, 2014 at 6:10 PM

Joe Johnson @JoeJohnsonABH

One month after turning 17, Hanif Rahim Ali was arrested for the first time as an adult in 2009 when caught prowling in a north Athens subdivision.

After many more brushes with the law in less than three years, Ali last Thursday was sentenced to prison following a felony conviction for possession of a stolen firearm.

Authorities say the young man is just one example of a local youth who never completed school and was attracted to the gangster lifestyle and subsequent life of crime.

His life as an adult has been marked by many run-ins with authorities, jail stays and probation.

By the time he was arrested for the stolen gun in 2012 at age 19, Athens-Clarke County police said "Triggahappy" Ali was a purported member of the Bloods street gang. His street name was Hanif Blood.

Triggahappy was the handle he used for his Facebook account, where police found evidence they said proved he should be prosecuted under the state's anti-gang law.

The arrest sent Ali to prison last May to serve two years in confinement for what had originally been a probated seven-year sentence for a 2011 attempted-robbery conviction.

He was transferred from prison to the Clarke County Jail last week so he could appear in Superior Court to face charges he belonged to a street gang and possession of a firearm by a convicted felon.

The former Tallassee Road resident is well acquainted with the system.

After his first arrest in December 2009, Ali was treated lightly by court officials, who dismissed a loitering or prowling charge and sent him to jail for seven days for violating the daytime student curfew.

But even while that case was still pending in court, the teen was arrested again in March 2010 on a disorderly conduct charge for fighting on Dearing Street.

In July, he was placed on probation for six months and ordered to perform community service for the disorderly conduct charge.

Just 10 days later, on July 29, 2010, Ali and three others were arrested for attempting to rob a chef who caught the youth stealing from his car parked outside his restaurant downtown.

The arrest caused a judge to revoke Ali's probation and sentence him to 30 days in jail, with credit for time already served.

When the attempted robbery case was disposed of by way of a plea deal in March 2011, Ali was sentenced to 124 days in confinement with credit for time served and given seven years of probation with a condition that he enroll in a GED program.

Now 19, Ali went on to violate his probation four times.

According to court records, he violated probation for failing to report to the Georgia Department of Corrections Day Reporting Center in Athens, admitting to drinking alcohol and smoking marijuana, testing positive for THC and benzodiazepine, and not attending a "motivation for change" class.

The last violation was when he committed new felonies.

In August 2012, officers on patrol at Bethel Midtown Village saw Ali acting suspiciously, going in and out a fenced-in area where air-conditioning units were located, police said,

When the officers searched the area, they found a loaded, stolen pistol, and they were able to pin the weapon to Ali because he had an empty holster that seemed to be molded for the gun.

A few days later, when Athens-Clarke police Det. Matthew Cross questioned Ali at the jail, the teen explained he had been hanging out at Bethel with a man who police had previously identified as affiliated with the Bloods street gang.

Two years earlier, while investigating reports of gunshots at the Jack R. Wells Homes housing complex in May 2010, police stopped a car occupied by two purported members of the Bloods.

One of the suspects had a cellphone that contained a contact entry for "Hanif blood" with Ali's phone number, police said.

Two months later, Ali and two other suspected Bloods members were arrested for robbery.

During an unrelated 2012 investigation, four months before Ali was arrested at Bethel Midtown Village, an officer with extensive gang training used an opportunity while speaking with Ali at his home on Tallassee Road to make several observations later used to charge him with violating the Georgia Street Gang Terrorism Prevention Act.

According to court documents, Senior Police Officer Paul Johnson saw a notebook in Ali's bedroom described as a gang "bible," or "book of knowledge," which contained handwritten gang rules, several lists of names and the gang's history.

A five-point star on the notebook's cover was "a symbol of the People Nation," of which the Bloods gang is a part, according to records.

"(I know) from training and experience that the possession of a gang bible or book of knowledge is another indicator that Mr. Ali is affiliated with a criminal street gang," detective Cross wrote in an affidavit for a warrant to search Ali's Facebook account.

"This Facebook account also contains a video of Mr. Ali making statements that are consistent with the Bloods criminal street gang and holding up gang signs," the detective wrote.

Investigators with Athens-Clarke County police and the Georgia Bureau of Investigation searched Ali's home and seized alleged gang evidence, including a notebook, "gang papers," and a computer and thumb drive that possibly held additional evidence.

More search warrants were executed on the computer and memory storage devices last month, and investigators placed into evidence a CD of photos and other electronically-stored information related to the case.

A Clarke County grand jury subsequently indicted Ali with violating the anti-gang statute, along with possession of a firearm by a convicted felon and theft by receiving a stolen gun.

Last week, Ali entered into another agreement with prosecutors in which he pleaded guilty to theft by receiving stolen property and possession of a firearm by a convicted felon. The street gang charge was dismissed.

Western Judicial Circuit Chief Judge David Sweat handed Ali a three-year sentence to run concurrent with the time he's already serving at Floyd County Prison. That is to be followed by two years of probation.